


Band-Aids Over Hemorrhages

by Tythius



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 14:48:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3294344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tythius/pseuds/Tythius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An Awoken warlock with no memory of who he was tries to be someone new in his second life--and fails, for the most part. In his defense, he swears he's trying.</p>
<p>Drabbles of varying length.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. How Do I Remember?

Ghost hovered in place above his head as the Awoken warlock sipped a cup of warm, clear liquid lightly flavored with some kind of plant. He had found several days ago that the biological processes his body was accustomed to were wholly unnecessary now that he had come back as some kind of undead. Still, he went through the motions of sipping his tea without really tasting it, mind on other things as the bustling activity in the Tower flowed smoothly around his stationary perch on the sofa below the docks. That was one more thing that unnerved him above all else—he no longer needed rest. The action of resting was now just a superficial artifact of a previous life, and the loss of that limitation unbound him but saddened him all the same. There was a soft sensation of sliding into awareness that only waking up from a deep slumber could give, and, of all the things he had forgotten, that sensation was one he remembered most. He had felt it when Ghost had woken him from centuries-long death, but little did he understand at the time that he was feeling that sensation for the last time in his undeath.

“Ghost,” he murmured into his cup.

“Yes, Guardian?” the construct chirped as it floated down to eye level.

“Will the Traveler take its Light back one day?” he stared at the ripples in the cup of tea, the water distorting the ice-blue glow of his irises into bright streaks across the pale blue of his reflected face while he continued blowing air gently across its surface.

“What do you mean?” the back half of Ghost’s chassis spun once in one direction, then reversed, as if in confusion.

“If the Traveler heals, will the Light that powers you—and me—return to the source? Do we cease to exist? Do I die, again?” he regarded Ghost with a calm face. His question wasn’t one of panic. There was an inevitability in his tone and a resigned temperament that undercut any sort of self-preserving indignation.

“I…do not know that, Guardian,” Ghost’s response came a beat late.

“Okay,” he replied with a tired smile. Being physically tired was a luxury he no longer had, but the warlock found that mental exhaustion was still very much within his privileges.

With a sudden tilt of his head, he downed the rest of the scalding tea, noting with a choking gasp the burns that formed inside his mouth and down his throat before they healed within seconds.

“I wish you would stop doing that,” Ghost hadn’t moved, fairly used to his Guardian’s penchant for self-inflicted injury.

“Choices matter, Ghost. Even if only for a few seconds,” he leaned back, closing his eyes in an attempt to feel sleepy. He had lost count of how many times he had tried this. Lost count of how many times he suddenly ached to just fall asleep after a hard-won battle. “For being a Guardian, you’d think I’d feel less like a faceless cog in a machine.”

“Memory loss is not uncommon among Guardians,” Ghost responded to the underlying question.

“Maybe the Traveler intended it that way, then. Cogs don’t need memories. They just need to spin when required,” and despite the bitterness of the statement, the warlock sounded bored—a kind of drawling, draining bored that kept him sane while he fought creatures he couldn’t believe and faced Darkness he couldn’t understand. He did, however, understand that “Who am I?” was a question long crushed by the weight of his current reality. In the face of Hive, Fallen, Vex, and Traveler-knows-what-else, identity was a luxury he couldn’t find the time or reason to afford.

In his pensive silence, the warlock almost missed what his Ghost said next.

“I am still glad to have found you, Guardian. All Ghosts feel that way about their Guardians. Perhaps the Traveler intended that, too,” Ghost said, settling in the air above his Guardian’s empty cup, looking up at the warlock with the glowing blue circle that served as eye and face.

The Guardian paused as he considered his small, but useful companion.

“Perhaps,” he quietly agreed with a faint smile, one that dared to hope. “As long as I know where I’m going, perhaps I don’t need to be in such a hurry to look back.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Ghost responded as he shimmered out of physical existence and into the space around the Guardian. “Shall we go?”

“Sure.”


	2. What's My Name?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two names with one stone.

“What’s your name?” the Exo Guardian asked, rummaging through the bodies of the Fallen around them for ammo.

The warlock opened his mouth, then closed it again, looking to Ghost for help.

“He doesn’t have a name—memory loss,” Ghost offered, to which the Exo snorted derisively—or something that sounded like a snort.

“Everyone’s gotta have a name, man,” the titan eyed the warlock as he spoke.

“Everyone’s just called me Guardian until now. I didn’t think I needed a name,” the warlock responded softly, staring pensively at the ground.

“Yeah, well, we’re all called ‘Guardian,’ so you need a name that’s actually, you know, your own,” the titan waved as his Ghost transmatted a Sparrow next to him. “Thanks for the help with this group of Fallen. See you back at the Tower, hopefully,” he said as he turned sharply on the Sparrow and drove off.

“Ghost,” the warlock’s lips thinned in frustration, “why can’t I think of a name?”

“The question just took you by surprise. Come on, let’s finish this patrol mission. You can think about a name when we get back to the Tower,” the construct nudged his Guardian gently, transmatting a red Sparrow next to him. Obligingly, the warlock hopped on and sped to the marked location, mind still spinning as Ghost scanned the premises.

They had been completing patrol missions on the Moon for what seemed like weeks, the warlock methodically receiving any messages from a flashing beacon. With little conversation, Ghost had worried that his slightly scatterbrained charge had forgotten that they needed to head back to the Tower soon to resupply and perform some repairs on both ship and Sparrow. Every reminder had been waylaid by a simple, “Okay, later,” and Ghost had quietly resigned himself to following after his airhead of a Guardian. Perhaps the memory loss came with strange side-effects, and Ghost didn’t want to consider that his Guardian might just be the most airy wielder of the Light this side of the universe. Even the most aloof warlocks in the Tower still had a sense of realism if not fatalism about them, but his Guardian bore none of that oppressive weight—indeed, the warlock seemed blissfully carefree by nature and even quiet moments of melancholy were offset by a serene disposition. Ghost had balked when he had overheard a hunter refer to his warlock as a “ditzy sort of guy, isn’t he?” but he couldn’t exactly counter the statement, especially not when his Guardian had been kicking a ball aimlessly around the Tower at the time.

“Guardian, we should really return to the Tower,” Ghost hovered in front of the warlock’s face, insistent in his own small ways.

“But I’m still in the moon kind of mood,” was the ridiculous reply.

“I insist,” Ghost transmatted his Guardian back to the ship before the warlock could protest further. Once the warlock was unceremoniously dropped into the pilot’s chair, he blinked away some minor surprise before taking Ghost’s defiance in stride.

“You’ve never done that before,” he said, settling into the chair as the ship entered warp speed.

“I apologize, but there is a limit to how long a Ghost can remain far from the Traveler before the constant exposure to creatures of the Darkness takes its toll. Besides routine ship maintenance, I would prefer to be fully charged, in a sense, before we encounter something particularly dangerous.”

“Oh, okay. You could have said so earlier. I thought you just wanted to fix the ship,” the warlock tilted his head to look up at Ghost.

“Well, initially, I did just want to fix the ship. Also, how’s the name selection coming along?”

At that, the Warlock’s amused expression dropped, replaced by slight furrowing of his eyebrows and a thoughtful squint as he canted his head to one side.

“I still don’t know. Can I be a color? Or name myself after something like the floor or the table?”

Ghost gently floated down in front of the warlock’s face before speaking.

“You want to call yourself ‘Floor’ or ‘Table,’” the construct repeated slowly.

“Okay, well, when you say it like that, it sounds bad,” the warlock laughed in response. “Do I have to have a name? This is…surprisingly really difficult. Can I skip this and go back to killing Hive on the moon?”

“If you want, but the titan had a point, you know? Everyone is technically called ‘Guardian.’”

With a sigh the warlock slumped down in the chair, resting his elbow on the armrest and balancing his right cheek on a loose fist.

“I guess it would be rude to use someone else’s name…” he muttered, tugging on an earlobe with his other hand. “What are names supposed to do? Identify someone, right? So it should have…some kind of characteristic of me in it?”

“I…suppose so. Though that’s not always the case for names,” Ghost floated in a slow orbit around the warlock’s head, hoping the Guardian wouldn’t get too lost in pondering the philosophical significance of a name. Airy and carefree, with a one-track mind. That was his warlock in a nutshell. And this was the warlock’s serious mode.

“Hmm, what are my characteristics?” he mumbled, mostly to himself. “Clueless, probably. That’s a definite characteristic. That’s how I’ve felt about this entire situation. Unnerved by everything, that’s another one.”

“How about ‘John’ or something?” Ghost suggested.

When the warlock lapsed into silence, Ghost thought his Guardian was seriously considering the name and he waited patiently for the confirmation.

“How bad is it?” the warlock finally asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“What the other Guardians think of me. How bad is it?”

The question was unexpected, to say the least. Ghost was surprised his Guardian had noticed that at all.

“…” Ghost’s shell spun quietly in response.

“That bad, huh?” the warlock said with a smile. Always taking everything in stride. Was that out of nature or necessity?

“…Maybe we could cut down on staring at the Traveler for days at a time when we’re waiting on repairs in the Tower,” Ghost’s tone was less accusing, more cajoling.

“I pretend to sleep sometimes, too, you know. I don’t always stare at the Traveler.”

“You know what I mean.” For a construct with no eyebrows, Ghost’s frame had the disapproving stare down pat. 

At the look, the warlock laughed again. With that, Ghost found himself once again modifying the adjectives that described his Guardian—airy, carefree, single-track mind, easily amused. And at the core of it all was an Awoken still coming to terms with who he had been before and who he was now, taking everything in and trying to piece himself together like a puzzle—except that he put the wrong pieces together more often than not and still made that work. A title with a person, but no name. A sense of curiosity, but no sense of urgency. A close-range fighter, but without plasteel in his armor. A mimicry of ‘the thoughtful warlock’ archetype, but daydreaming instead. The personality at the center tied everything up in the most methodically maddening way, and all Ghost could do was follow along and try to prevent his Guardian from needlessly jumping off the Tower just to see if his warlock bond’s color would change after a revival. (It didn’t.)

“How about ‘Pith?’” Ghost offered, serious this time.

“That sounds…really unintimidating, Ghost,” the Guardian replied, though he mouthed the name a few times afterwards as if tasting it on his tongue. Hell, for all that Ghost knew, his Guardian might actually have been tasting it on his tongue.

“I like it,” the warlock suddenly declared. “I’ll be a Pith until further notice.” He eyed Ghost for a moment. “And you’ll be a Pin until I stop being a Pith.”

“Why am I ‘Pin?’”

“Because you’re like a safety pin. You pin all the fieldweave together whenever the seams start coming apart. Like that,” Pith stated matter-of-factly, a satisfied smile on his face.

“I don’t understand—“

But before Ghost could continue, Pith grabbed him with both hands and brought the construct down to eye level, staring intently at Ghost’s blue eye.

“No, actually, I still like calling you Ghost. Ghostpin? Pin the Ghost? Post? Gin? Oh! I got it. You’ll be Ping.” 

“I—what?”

“Ping. I’m calling you Ping from now on,” Pith released Ghost as the construct’s chassis spun clockwise and counterclockwise alternatingly.

With a sound that might have been a sigh, Ghost’s light blinked twice.

“Fine. I’ll be Ping,” Ping relented.


End file.
